'Lost Squadron' WWII Warplane Discovered Deep Beneath a Greenland Glacier

Searchers have located the wreck of a P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft buried deep within a glacier in Greenland, more than 70 years after a lost squadron of U.S. warplanes crash-landed on the ice there during World War II.

The search team plans to dig and melt the rediscovered warplane out of the glacier next summer — and the searchers hope that their techniques can locate other World War II air wrecks in the region, including some that carried MIA (missing in action) U.S. airmen. [Photos: WWII Battleship 'USS Juneau' Discovered]

The Lost Squadron of airplanes included a group of two B-17 bombers and six P-38 fighters flying from the U.S. to Britain in July 1942 when they hit a storm and went down in remote Greenland. Here, a photo of the P-38 fighter on the ice.

Credit: US Army

The search leader, California businessman Jim Salazar, told Live Science that the team found the wrecked P-38 on July 4  beneath more than 300 feet (91 meters) of ice using a ground-penetrating radar antenna fitted to a heavy-lift aerial drone. The drone was scanning a part of the glacier where hints of the buried warplane were detected in 2011.

A ground team then used a thermal probe to melt through the thick ice — it came up covered in hydraulic oil from the buried aircraft.

After a drone found the spot where the 'Lost Squadron' may have been, a thermal probe was used to melt the thick ice and came up covered in hydraulic oil from the buried aircraft.

Salazar said that the radar-equipped drone had located the warplane beneath the ice in a few minutes of flight time, while a ground crew would have taken 6 or 7 hours to cover the same area with a radar sled.

The buried plane was in a remote region made dangerous by hidden ice crevasses, sudden storms and hungry polar bears. "This is a very cold-weather region and an inhospitable location," Salazar said.